Central Park (NY)

Perhaps the best-known urban park in the United States, Central Park is an 843-acre area located in the center of New York City, offering a sharp contrast to the expansive metropolitan landscape. Central Park's boundaries are marked by on the south by 59th Street (Central Park South), on the north by 110th Street (Central Park North), on the east by Fifth Avenue, and on the west by Eighth Avenue (Central Park West).

The history of Central Park is extensive. Among many lesser-known inhabitants, it was poet and [Page 232]newspaper editor William Cullen Bryant (1794–1878) who in 1844 called for the creation of a public park that would be open to all inhabitants, no matter their social position or ethnic origins. By 1850, most of the city's 500,000 residents lived below 38th Street, several blocks lower than the Park's current 59th street southern border. In 1853, the New York State Legislature approved a bill that designated the future location for a public park. Contrary to popular belief, Central Park was not a genuine forest preserved from urbanization: Before 1850, it combined a treeless, rocky terrain and stagnant swampland that was later to be transformed into a public park with artificial lakes.

In 1857, the commissioners of New York City had organized a public competition for architects to design the project, and received 33 anonymous entries. Finally, architects Frederick Law Olmsted (1822–1903) and Calvert Vaux (1824–95) were chosen to design the Greensward Plan in 1858. Olmsted was inspired by Birkenhead Park, near Liverpool, which had opened in 1847, as the first public park in England. Instead of a square plan as in parks in Paris or Versailles, Central Park was designed with some irregular lines that would seem more natural.

According to scholars Elizabeth Blackmar and Roy Rosenzweig, many people were first opposed to the construction of Central Park, such as the “1,600 poor residents, including Irish pig farmers and German gardeners, who lived in shanties on the site.” Some fights even broke out as many farmers resisted. Nevertheless, Blackmar and Rosenzweig acknowledge that “the park first opened for public use in the winter of 1859 when thousands of New Yorkers skated on lakes constructed on the site of former swamps.”

However, Central Park did not really emerge from the soil of Manhattan. According to the Central Park Conservancy website, some 500,000 cubic feet of topsoil was carted in from New Jersey, totaling more than 10 million cartloads of material by 1873. Official statistics indicate that there were more than 4 million trees, shrubs, and plants, representing more than 1,400 species, when Central Park was completed in 1878—after about twenty years of work. The Central Park Zoo was created in 1871.

Throughout the years, Central Park has encountered periods of abandon and misuse. From time to time, it was invaded by homeless people who wanted to live on its premises: thousands of victims of the 1930s' Great Depression built shacks in Central Park, which was nicknamed “Hooverville” in reference to President Herbert Hoover (1874–1964). A similar movement arrived in the 1970s, when groups of hippies spent day and night in the park. As the growing occurrence of trash, bugs, and crime became more frequent in the park, other visitors felt uncomfortable with these circumstances, proving that a park cannot be dedicated only to a single group or just for the poorest; but must remain equally accessible to the whole population. This is sharp contrast with 19th century rules, when children needed special written permission to play ball in Central Park.

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